A Simple Conversation
by SaikonoYume
Summary: Years after the Eve Wars, Duo returns to the church he was raised in and ends up getting more than he bargained for. ...Why do summaries always sound so stupid? Read and review, onegai.


This is something I originally wrote for a school assignment, using different names and what not, but it struck me how much it was like Duo. So I changed the names to be more reminiscent of Duo's life, trials, and tribulations. It's short compared to most of my stuff, but I think it's very nice for being so short. My friend, Isariel, said to me that it's complex in its simplicity. ^___^;; But I think it's just plain weird. Read and review, please!

.o0O@O0o.

As he looks back on everything he has done in life, and everything he has done in the world, he wonders if it was all simply pointless. He wonders if all he did and experienced wasn't just part of some cosmic joke some god was playing on him for kicks. It is so odd how one can change to the point where being thirty years old feels like three hundred, he figures to himself.

            Life probably isn't some comic joke, though he might wish, or think, it is. There is a point to life, albeit the fact that he can't find it anywhere he looks. He can't find it in death. In war. In love. In peace. Or even in life itself. So. Here he is. Back where he started, so to speak.

            He is back where he was when Father Maxwell took him in at his church. He is back, wandering the streets of the place that he once called home. Wandering the dark, dirty streets of a dark, dirty city. Amazing, he sill thinks, that in such a godforsaken place there was a gem such as this church.

            He remembers how he was taken to this place, as he stands before it. He remembers the sickness that made him an orphan at four. He remembers the sickness that killed his friends. He remembers the damned sickness… He loathes it, even today. It's strange how he can loathe something like a disease that is so far in the past, he thinks to himself as he stands in silence.

            But it has taken him here, to this place. The sickness had taken him here, to this place where he was cleaned and dressed in actual clothing, not the rags he was used to. It had been heaven. The situation had even led him to the belief in a god, a god of any kind. That had ended quickly though, that belief. He had never seen a miracle, but he had seen lots of death. And the Eve Wars added to the weight death had over miracles.

            At the beginning of the Eve Wars, his church had been destroyed. He doesn't, to this day, know why. He never will, most likely. But it was attacked. Destroyed. Crushed into a fine powder that runs, even now, like blood between his fingers. No one had built anything over the site of the ruined church. It is exactly as he remembers it being twenty-one years before, when he was nine.

            He begins to wonder why no one has used this area to build another building, and, as such, he begins to walk through the carnage. He sees nothing strange, nothing unusual for a wrecked building (and he has seen a lot of them between the time that the Eve Wars started and ended) of any kind. How incredibly odd it is, he thinks.

            Then he stops. There, to his right, is a cross. But it is not upright, it is upside down: a sign many associate with Satan. Strange, he thinks. Very peculiar. Even people who don't believe in heaven and hell, people who don't believe in God and Lucifer, don't go near a place that appears to have been damned in some manner or fashion.

            Quietly, with the reverence of a child that he hasn't possessed since he himself was a child, he begins to walk to the cross, a strange tugging feeling forcing him onward. He feels that, if he stops before he reaches the icon, he will be torn in twain by the force. He stops before the cross. It stands exactly as he remembers it, except, now, it is upside down and the silver is tarnished.

            He places his hand on the cross and pulls with all his might, tugging the cross out of the rain slick ground. He falls back as the cross comes free, surprised that it slides out of the ground so easily. Even more surprised is he when the cross lands right side up in the ground, standing erect and beautiful, even though tarnished, in the fading light of dusk.

            Reaching into his shirt, he pulls out the cross that a sister had given him when she died. It is a miniature replica of the larger cross before him. Made of silver, there are ornately carved vines and roses twining up and down the length of the cross. His is not tarnished, though, like the one before him, for he cleans it every night. But the cleaning is not done out of reverence for the sister's God, who let His servant die, but for the nun herself. His child-like trust in a god is dead now.

            Some people, he finally decides, are fools. He stands, reluctant to stay kneeling before something that caused the death of the only family he remembers.

            "Damn you, God," he snarls. "People fight in Your name--kill in Your name--and, yet, _you do nothing!!"_

            The sound of something crunching beneath hesitant feet calls out in the silence that follows his shout of rage. He whirls, enraged that someone is listening to him; that some one is watching him. He feels as one does when they've been violated in every possible way.

            A small, female child stands before him, looking up at his face. Her eyes are pale, so very pale, as they stare into his. They look as if someone painted a light coat of green paint over glass they are so pale. Her hair tumbles to her shoulders in thick locks of brown, shining in the light of the dusk.

            "How do you know?"

            Her voice is soft and it seems to sparkle like wine. The quality of it is to the ears as honey is to the tongue: soft and thick and delicious. He craves hearing her speak again, but she seems to be waiting.

            He frowns, then realizes she has asked a question. "How do I know what?" he asks.

            "That He does nothing." Her tone, now, is flat, almost dead, but she cannot seem to hide its beauty.

            He huffs, turning to face the setting sun before speaking. "Isn't it obvious, Little One? Look at this place!" he exclaims, opening his arms to the remains of Saint Peter's.

            "I see it," she replies too quietly to hear.

            "Do you see the carnage and ruin?" he demands. "The god of these people did this!"

            "I see a cross," comes the placate reply. "I see a cross, tarnished and weathered. I see the souls of the people who died here, protecting the tarnished cross. I see the souls hidden in the dust and ashes that continue to protect this cross. I see you, sir."

            He growls, now, annoyed with her. "You don't see the truth!" he snaps, glaring.

            She spreads her arms wide. "What is truth?"

            "How can I define--"

            "What is 'I'?"

            "Who are you?" he demands, suddenly wary. He reaches for his cross under his shirt.

            "I am who I am. Nothing more. The meaning of my existence is none of your concern. Your own existence is more important to you, is it not?" she asks, and he knows better than to answer, frozen in the motion grabbing his cross. "It is strange."

            He looks at her, his eyes searching hers.

            "The first object you reach for when scared is your cross. I am a child. Why are you scared?" Her eyes are wide; her face alight with the innocence only a child can possess. But there is death in her eyes. This child has seen war.

            "No child asks questions like you," he replies, in barely a whisper, returning his hand to his side.

            "I know."

            She brushes past him, and kneels before the cross, clasping her tiny hands. "Earth to earth. Ashes to ashes. Dust to dust. From that which we came do we return. Take them. Love them. They are Your Own. Amen."

            She stands and begins to sing, touching her hand to the center rose on the cross before her. "'_Amazing grace, how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me…'" She walks away, leaving him, the sound of her crystalline voice flitting along the breeze behind her._

            He watches as she leaves, frowning. There is something about her. About this church. About many people. Something different. Something unique. Something he doesn't have.

            He returns to standing before the cross and says, "I suppose, like the perfect ending, it won't be too much longer until everything I've ruined in the War has seen me gone. And I suppose I pray that, in time, everyone will forgive me, even knowing who I am. I've always just sort of fallen, like grains of sand, at feet that aren't there to see me fall, sweep me up, and put me back together. And, in the end, scattered sand or no, my life never really makes much sense to me.

            "I mean, during the Eve Wars, I lived so many lies. Every time I lived another one, something inside me just seemed to vanish, leaving this empty shadow. I don't think people can forgive me… because… I call out and I get no reply. I feel like a ghost that no one can hear. And they don't see how crazed my life is. They don't see what war has done to me… The world will never know how much it means to me. It's so beautiful, yet everyone wants to destroy it.

            "Is that what's different? That she wants to save the world? She saw things so much differently than I did… I think… Yes, I think that she wants to save the world instead of destroying it, like everyone else wants to destroy it. Huh. It's weird. It took me this long and standing in front of a symbol for a religion I don't even believe to realize all of that."

            With that, he pulls his black baseball cap down and over his eyes. He tucks his cross necklace back under his shirt. He turns and begins to walk off. But he stops, and he looks back at the lonely cross behind him.

            He smiles.

            And he sings.

~Owari~


End file.
